Black Is Black
by Musamea
Summary: Phoenix and Wolverine discuss powers, control, fear, love. LM, SJ, post X2
1. Silver

**Title:** Black Is Black  
**Author: **Musamea  
**Rating:** PG-13 for language, sexuality.  
**Disclaimer: **X-Men belong to Stan Lee, Marvel, Fox, etc. I just play around in their universe.  
**Summary: **Phoenix and Wolverine discuss powers, control, fear, love. L/M, S/J, post X2

* * *

_He will be indestructible... the Wolverine, mutant number...pain, bright and flashing, against his skin, under his skin, pain...water dripping from the tank...a long, thin needle...Stryker! You bastard, what have you done to me? Just a failed experiment...claws...pain...adamantium...claws...indestructible...pain!_

He jerks awake. _Shit, claws, claws, okay, they're still in, Marie's safe, she's safe, okay, shit._ He wipes at his sweating forehead with the corner of the sheet and waits for the air to come back to his lungs, for his breath to steady and his pulse to slow. The claws itch at the inside of his knuckles.

The clock reads three-thirty. Moonlight pours through the room's one open window, stretching long and silvery across the floor, reaching for the shadowed corners. Silver light, silver claws, silver streaks in Marie's hair. He shakes his head. Too many important things in his life revolve around that color. He wonders if this was how Slim feels about red, this mixture of disgust and curiosity, fascination and fear.

Marie stirs. "Logan?" she murmurs drowsily.

He flicks some hair back from her face, deadly knuckles nearly brushing deadly skin. The only person who could feasibly kill him (other than, perhaps, the Professor), and here she is, in his bed. Also the only person who could survive if his claws came out, here in bed. There is an ironic statement buried somewhere in there, but he doesn't want to chase those thoughts tonight.

He knows she can make him forget the nightmares, at least for a little while, but they've been on missions for two days running and..._and not everyone has a healing factor, bub. She needs her sleep._ Besides, sex with Marie could never be casual, and tonight he is too mentally tired and worn to bother with the scarves and sheets and deliberation that it would entail. So-

"Go back to sleep, darlin'. I'm gonna have a smoke."

He slides out of the bed and tugs on his jeans, checks to see if she's going to get up anyway, but no, she turns over and burrows deeper beneath the blankets. He smiles; his Mississippi variety of Southern Comfort, always cold here in New York. He tugs the window shut, then grabs cigar and lighter as he slips out the door.

The halls are still and silent so late at night – or does it count as early in the morning by now? If it were a Friday or Saturday, his sensitive hearing might pick up a group of giggling students sneaking back into the mansion via the staircases, but this is a school night, and if that weren't enough of a deterrent (and it often wasn't) he knows that Slim is giving a Calculus test early tomorrow – today.

So he walks without meeting anyone, moving slowly, for it's times like these that the metal seems to press most heavily against his bones. It's a deep ache, like joint pain or arthritis in the old. _Wonder if the Professor has arthritis? Heh, not too funny when you could be his age. Stryker, bastard, what have you taken from me?_

He thinks about how he won't be able to tell his children about his own childhood. Assuming that he and Marie will be able to have kids. _Can she suck the life outta something that's inside of her?_ It's something they've never discussed, not with each other, not with Hank or Jeannie or someone who might have some answers. They're both afraid of hearing no; it isn't possible; it will never be possible. And what kind of mutation might their children turn out having? He knows he's the one who carries the X-gene, but that doesn't mean anything. Bobby Drake's father carried it too, and he didn't go around making icicles. _Shoulda paid more attention to Jeannie's lectures._

And does he want to subject another human being to this life? Always alert, paying close attention to whatever shit Congress tries to pull, being mocked and ridiculed and misunderstood. Can fulfilling the nesting instinct (he prefers thinking of it as pack mentality) ever justify what his kids might have to face? He doesn't know.

It's quite a night for heavy thoughts.

The breeze is cool and crisp against his face when he steps out onto the roof. Fall is rapidly approaching, and the trees on the property have been turning a riot of crimson and orange and gold. The moon is full tonight; it hangs in the night sky like a great silver dollar. He feels the strangest inclination to tilt his head back and howl.

_Stop this shit; you're the Wolverine, not a werewolf._

So he lights his cigar and lifts it to his lips. _There we go, more in character_. The Professor is always talking about setting an example for the younger students, but hell, they're either going to know better or they're not. Besides, what good is a healing factor if you can't indulge yourself once in awhile?

He watches the smoke curl up and drift away into the sky. Grey smoke, silver stars. He picks out some of the constellations, though he's a little less familiar with these than the ones in deep winter. Holed up in a cabin in Alaska for a season, yeah, you get pretty familiar with Orion, Taurus, that lot. He sighs, rubs a hand over his face. This, at least, he will be able to give to the children – if not his and Marie's, then other parents' kids, here at Mutant Prep.

Then he sees a shape at the far end of the roof. It's little more than a shadow, an outline, black against black. His mind flies back to that night when Stryker's men attacked the mansion. _Snick._ He winces as the claws come out.

The shape changes a little, looking his way. He tenses. _C'mon then._


	2. Red

She doesn't need so much sleep anymore. It isn't the forced insomnia of her year doing rotations in med school, when she had to juggle twenty-four hour shifts with lab work and training back at the mansion. And it's not the sleeplessness that haunted her during the months the Senate was discussing the Mutant Registration Bill either. Back then, she'd take catnaps to get herself through the day, or sometimes she would find herself nodding off while running a gel in the lab. But now… now she simply doesn't need to lie down and close her eyes for so many hours a day to regain her strength. Maybe she has more reserves of energy to tap into now, she really doesn't know.

If she doesn't sleep, then the nightmares do not come. So why dream more than she needs to?

So she comes up here, to watch the moon rise and the stars appear one by one in the sky, to survey the false, pre-dawn light that paints the world into half-tones of grey and slate-blue, to greet the sun as its first rays blush across the sky before turning to red and burnished gold. It was how she first saw the world when she rose from the waters at Alkali Lake – blackest night bleeding into day.

She senses him before he's even anywhere near the roof. This is another new thing, this ultra-awareness of everything, everyone. She feels as if she's been time warped back to those terrible first years of learning to live with her mutation, that terrible thing inside of her head that grasped at other people's thoughts and memories. It took years for her to learn how to build effective shields, and she wonders if it will be the same now, how long it will be before she can wall in this new part of her.

_What is happening to me?_

There is no precedent for this, and that frightens her. Scientists are ever building on the achievements of those who came before them; doctors compare symptoms to lists of known diseases. But there is no list for her now. No how-to manual that explains what happens after resurrection. No one to teach her what to do with this swirling black-red mass of sheer power whose talons constantly scrabble at the inside of her, trying to get out, trying to manifest.

She knows it's Logan behind her even before she turns her head. She doesn't need to see his claws gleam silver in the moonlight to know that they are out, doesn't need the cigar smoke that the wind is blowing toward her to know that there is a fire lit nearby.

"It's me," she calls, because she knows he can't smell her from that far away upwind. Bad grammar, she knows, but hey, she's not the one who teaches English at this school.

He relaxes, and she turns her gaze back out over the grounds. Several seconds pass, his footsteps approach, he drops down beside her.


	3. Black

"How's it goin', Jeannie?"

She smiles. "Can't sleep?"

"Wouldn't be up here if I could."

She nods. "I have nightmares too."

He makes no reply to that, but she already knew he wouldn't. Admitting to what everyone already knew anyway would seem too much like weakness to him. She sighs and leans back on her elbows, kicking her feet out over empty air. She knows they all worry about this, what they perceive as recklessness in her. It has been long enough a time for them to move past awe and fright to worry. She doesn't think she has nine lives, really, but...well, it is a little hard to be frightened of anything outside of herself anymore. Except for one thing-

"How do you do it, Logan? How do you go to bed every night with the knowledge that you might really hurt the person next to you?" _The person who is your best friend, your lover, who is dearer to your heart than anyone else in this world._

"You worried 'bout Slim?"

"I'm worried about what I might do _to_ Scott."

"None of us has a mutation that is fully in our control, Jeannie. Not the Professor, not 'Ro, Wagner...none of us."

She wonders what she can say to make him understand. "This isn't like that. I know what it was like for me before...that uneasy truce with the TK, not knowing if it'd leak out, if my shields were strong enough, what I might do if they weren't...I've had all of those worries. This is different. It's like there's something _inside _of me...another person, or consciousness, or manifestation or something. And I don't know its limits. I don't know how much damage it might do if it escapes."

He considers this for a minute. His forehead puckers. "But why do you think it will do damage? Seems to me like it did us a lotta good at Alkali Lake. And before then, with the missiles."

"But that wasn't _me_, not really. Yes, I did...direct it, I suppose would be the way of putting it. I willed it to do something, to detonate a missile, to lift the Blackbird...and I hoped it would be enough to get the jet started, to stop the water. But all those things...at some point Jean Grey ended, and _it _took over. And I can't help feeling like this thing has a mind of its own and it's just...borrowing my body for awhile." She laughs, half in sadness, half in self-mockery. "Do you know, sometimes I feel like it's testing me. Daring me to allow it full reign, just to see how powerful it truly is. Daring me to do something crazy, like jump off this roof and flap my arms."

She says it lightly. _Leave the flying to Warren_, she tells herself. _He's the one with the wings._ But one part of her really believes it. More than believes it, _knows_ that she can fly. As she knew at Alkali Lake; she could have lifted herself out after the jet, but no, she had stood her ground – in defiance? in terror? – until the water slammed into her, disintegrated her. She is afraid to examine the emotion that felt so dangerously like relief when she limped out of the Blackbird, relief that this was going to come to an end, relief that she was doing something right with the power, relief that it hadn't taken over her, hadn't burst its bonds.

_The Professor knows_, she thinks. _Scott probably suspects_. But she cannot discuss that feeling with the former, because even he does not know quite what to do with the new power inside of her. And she cannot confirm it to the latter, because she knows Scott, knows he will take it personally, knows he will worry, or beat himself up, knows he will not understand.

_Oh Scott, it_ did _break something inside of me, when you came running after me and I had to slam the hatch to keep you inside where you belonged. And then to hear you begging me not to do what I had to do...not to kill myself, in essence...that hurt more than you know. But I was so frightened, of myself, of what I was capable of, of what else I might do..._

Logan's voice cuts into her thoughts. "I know my claws might come out in my sleep. I know I could seriously hurt Rogue. She can also seriously hurt me. Hell, Jeannie, Slim could seriously hurt _you_, if his goggles ever got knocked off. And you two don't even have the benefit of a healing factor...or an ability to acquire a healing factor if you needed it."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm sayin' it's a risk. Like so many other things with love, it's a risk. And it's one you have to decide if you're willin' to take. Lemme ask you something: do you ever worry that Slim might fry you in his sleep?"

"Maybe...I mean yeah, sure. But not as much as I worry that I might cave the roof in over us whenever I have a bad dream."

"That's my point. We worry about what we might do a hell of a lot more than we worry what they could do to us. Why?"

She thinks about it. "I trust Scott. No...it's more than that. I _believe_ in him; I believe he's going to make those straps as tight as they need to be; I believe that his first reaction to losing his sleep goggles will be closing his eyes, or keeping them closed."

"Exactly. And I believe that Rogue is gonna wake up the second she starts suckin' the life outta me. She believes that I'll wake up before the claws are half out, if they ever do come out. And Slim probably believes something along those lines about you."

"But-"

"But what, Jeannie? You were gonna say that your powers are different, weren't you? You were gonna say that this is uncharted, that this is completely new, that even the Professor doesn't know what the hell to do with you."

"Isn't all of that true?"

"Sure. But hell, _none_ of what's happened to us mutants has been charted. These kids here, they've got the advantage, growin' up with a bunch of mutie teachers, knowin' that they ain't freaks...but what about the poor kid who lives in some small Bible Belt town that's never had a mutant before? That has no tolerance for 'em? He doesn't have anyone to tell him what's what when he starts shooting plasma from his fingers. You're feelin' what every mutant feels, when they first discover their mutation."

"But this isn't supposed to happen, Logan!" she protests. "I've dealt with all of that already! Mutation manifests during periods of heightened emotion in puberty. _Not_ when the subject is over thirty and has handled TK and TP for years. _No one_ resurrects."

"You did. Ain't that enough? And all your fancy science, all that research...maybe that only applies to these couple generations of mutants. For all you know, your kids might be exactly like you. Their powers might be greater. Hell, they might travel through fuckin' time. _You just don't know_, Jean. Just because somethin' has never happened before...it doesn't mean it can't, or shouldn't. It doesn't mean it's bad. It doesn't mean _you're_ bad."

She closes her eyes. It makes so much sense and, oh God, she wants to believe it. She laughs weakly, "You've done a lot of thinking about this, haven't you?"

"Damn straight I have. And you know what? I used to hate the part of me that I saw as bein' 'the Wolverine.' _The animal_, I called it. I used to be terrified that I would lose control of it when I'm with Rogue, because I'd done so before, lost control when I was with a woman, I mean. I said the same shit you're sayin' now. I was afraid to hurt her, afraid that I'd lose her if she saw what I had inside of me."

"What changed?"

"I talked to her 'bout it. I know, surprise, surprise, big bad Wolverine talks about his feelings. But I told her, and she told me a lotta the stuff that I'm tellin' you now. And I didn't believe her at first, of course not. But eventually...yeah, I saw that just because there's somethin' inside of me that wants to go into a cage and beat the livin' hell outta some poor bastard, that gets off on pain, that wants to mark the women I fuck as mine...that doesn't make me evil, or irredeemable. It didn't make Rogue love me less. Y'know why? _Because_ I didn't like it, because I fought it. Like you're fightin' this thing inside you now because you're afraid it might make you do somethin' bad. Now, Jean, if you _weren't_ fightin' it..._then_ I'd start worryin'. But right now? Right now it looks pretty normal to me."

"So I fight this forever?" She shakes her head, the prospect of _that _makes her wish she were still in a million pieces, scattered through Alkali Lake.

He shrugs. "You fight it for awhile. You fight it for as long as it takes before you learn to accept it as part of yourself, before you learn to control it...and you will, Jean, you will learn to control it. But it'll be slow, and hard, and sometimes it'll get away from you...and that's why you should go downstairs and get back into Slim's bed, even if you don't plan on doin' much sleepin'. Because, trust me, you're gonna want him beside you while you're learnin' all of this. It's hard enough without doin' it all by yourself.

"And now," he stubs out his cigar, which has been reduced to an inch in length during the conversation, "I'm goin' back to bed." He stands and puts the remains of the cigar into his pocket. "And you owe me a smoke."


	4. Dark and Light

The clock reads four-thirty. The moon has shifted in the sky so that the space beneath the window is dark and swathed in shadow. He tries to close the door quietly, but he's not sorry when she wakes and turns over at the sound.

"How was the cigar?"

He chuckles and sits on the edge of the bed to take off his jeans. "Didn't really get to it, kid."

He laughs when she hits him in the back. She hates it when he calls her that. "You're a real pervert, Logan."

"Mmhmm." He turns, draws her to him by grasping some of her hair – deadly knuckles nearly brushing deadly skin – and kisses her quickly. "Love you, darlin', every part of you." He crawls beneath the blankets and pulls her close, careful to keep the sheet between them. "You'll never guess who else was up on the roof…"

* * *

Jean sits and watches the sky lighten. Dawn comes so subtly that it's only when the last star disappears that she realizes it's morning. She lies sprawled out on the roof, arms and legs spread wide, and she thinks about floating, flying, she thinks about fear and what Logan had to say about fear, she thinks about nothing at all.

The thing inside of her sighs and turns over. She is still, watching, waiting, not fighting for once. But nothing happens. She doesn't flatten a line of trees with her TK, psionic balls don't burst from her palms, her mind doesn't open up to the thoughts of all the mansion's inhabitants. _It doesn't mean he's right_, she tells herself. But she allows herself to be cautiously pleased. To hope.

So she goes back downstairs as the sun begins to rise, and finds Scott in their bathroom, spitting toothpaste into the sink. She puts her arms around his waist, sliding her hands up to trace over his bare ribs. He lost weight in the six months that she was gone, and shallow lines are etched around his mouth. No vestige of the boy remains.

She presses her cheek against his back now. _The Fearless Leader_, the students call him, but she knows he's afraid of so much. Of what measures the government may one day pass, of not doing enough for the school, of losing a member of the team. Of losing her.

But not afraid of her. Not afraid of whatever it is inside of her. Trust, belief, foolhardiness, she's not sure what propels him.

Love, maybe.

One of his hands comes up to meet hers, fingers entwining. He gives her palm a little squeeze.

_Where've you been?_

_Up on the roof_. She smiles, and her amusement bleeds through the link between their minds. _Getting love advice from the Wolverine_.

He laughs, a short, sharp kick of air that moves his diaphragm beneath her palms. "And what words of wisdom did he have to impart?"

She turns her head, kisses the back of his neck, and pulls away from him. _I'll tell you later_. She floats a stack of papers over from his desk to hover next to his elbow. _Right now, you've got this Calculus test to give_.


End file.
